January 11, 2017

Business data compiler Dun & Bradstreet announced purchase of Avention, which distributes B2B company and contact data through lists, triggers, and integration with CRM and marketing automation systems. Price was $150 million. Avention had previously used more than 100 data sources, including event, social, and contact information not found in D&B’s own data set. D&B’s announcement stressed the value of Avention’s software as a distribution channel. The acquisition comes almost two years to the day since D&B purchased NetProspex, which added individual contact names to D&B’s company-level information. Will D&B keep all of Avention’s sources? Will vendors who resell D&B data object to direct competition? Will D&B make more acquisitions? Stay tuned.

Open source data platform vendor Hortonworks and identity data expert Neustar are cooperating to develop identity management services for Internet of Things devices. Goals are to provide better security and simpler management by registering and authenticating devices. IoT security is already a huge issue and will get bigger quickly. It's a great extension for Neustar, which was recently purchased by private equity investors.

Velocidi gathers marketing spend and performance data and makes it available to brands and agencies for analysis. It’s building a unified database and can append demographic, competitive, and brand data and even consumer comments. But it’s not tracking behavior of individual consumers. The company just raised $12 million in Series A financing.

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